Not so, for every souls who trusted the risen Lord Jesus to save him/her by His sinless shed blood as a damned and morally destitute sinner( which has always been the case within Catholicism) - versus being made actually good enough to be with God - was/is a Protestant in essence.
I was such myself, becoming manifestly born again thru such simple faith as a convicted, lost but regular Mass-going RC (who had fallen away, and even nature seemed new to this rural 25 year-old.
And knowing of no other church i felt i could trust, i remained a weekly Mass-going and every day of obligation RC for approx. 6 years, during which time i sought to serve God as a CCD teacher and lector.
And seeking to find fellowship with others who had realized this profound change in heart and life (though i was aware of sin even more) with its resultant hunger to know how to please God from the Scripture, but which persons I found very rare, though i met some in RC charismatic meetings.
Instead what mainly nourished my souls was evangelical radio which i was able to listen to as a truck driver. I would seek to witness to others of their need for Christ, and only left Rome after I sincerely prayed to God to show me if I should seek another church, which He manifestly did the next day, and has only confirmed my entrance into evangelical faith, despite its need for continued reformation, and my own as well.
And my opposition to Catholicism is not driven by some personal animosity to it, and I have even asked myself if somehow being a RC could be reconciled with Scripture, but I honestly have seen more and more that the Catholic distinctives are not what the NT church manifestly believed, but that she is in substantial conflict to it, while the church overall today falls behind the purity, power and passion of the NT church, as I do.
But the only one true church is the body of all believers, which was purchased with the sinless blood of Christ, and is His His bride, for it alone always only consists 100% of believers (there have been and are even a few RCs in it), which prevails against the gates of Hell to rescue sinners.
Thus while their cannot be an invisible body without visible manifestations, the one true church cannot refer to any one particular organic church, since such inevitably become amalgams of wheat and tares,
But as always, a relative remnant shall be saved. May we all be of the tribe.
daniel1212 that is the most devastating Spiritual refutation to the Catholic claim of being 'the one true Church.' I doubt, however, that any Catholic on these threads will allow that powerful TRUTH to sink into their org-trained mind. It is a Truth spiritually discerned, not mental gymnastics discerned. But it is the most powerful I have ever read refuting that Catholicism claim.