Why did Protestants think Revelation's "Mother of harlots" represented the Roman Church but didn't recognize themselves as the "harlot daughters"?

**Revelation 7** describes a woman (symbolizing a church): > **3** … and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. > **4** And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: > **5** And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. > **6** And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration. [Whore of Babylon - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whore_of_Babylon#Reformation_view#:~:text=Historicist%20interpreters,this%20association.) says of this scripture: > ### Reformation view > Historicist interpreters commonly used the phrase "Whore of Babylon" to refer to the Catholic Church. > Reformation writers Martin Luther (1483–1546, author of On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church), John Calvin (1509–1564), and John Knox (1510–1572, author of The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women) taught this association. > > Most early Protestant Reformers believed, and the modern Seventh-day Adventist Church teaches, that in Bible prophecy a woman represents a church. > The connection noted on the seven hills of Rome is argued to locate the church. This "whore" church is described as being a "mother of harlots". --- Catholics refer to their Church as the "Holy Mother Church". Protestants saw this "whore" as representing the Roman Church, but failed to recognize the corresponding relationship between the church's "harlot daughters" and their own churches. Did they have a rational explanation of why these daughters don't represent their own Protestant denominations?