**How do protestants respond to apostolic succession(the line of bishops stretching back to the apostles) ?**

Pope Clement I

> 
> “Through countryside and city [the apostles] preached, and they
> appointed their earliest converts, testing them by the Spirit, to be
> the bishops and deacons of future believers. Nor was this a novelty,
> for bishops and deacons had been written about a long time earlier. .
> . . Our apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would
> be strife for the office of bishop. For this reason, therefore, having
> received perfect foreknowledge, they appointed those who have already
> been mentioned and afterwards added the further provision that, if
> they should die, other approved men should succeed to their ministry”
> (Letter to the Corinthians 42:4–5, 44:1–3 [A.D. 80]).
> 
> 
> 

Hegesippus

> 
> “When I had come to Rome, I [visited] Anicetus, whose deacon was
> Eleutherus. And after Anicetus [died], Soter succeeded, and after him
> Eleutherus. In each succession and in each city there is a continuance
> of that which is proclaimed by the law, the prophets, and the Lord”
> (Memoirs, cited in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 4:22 [A.D. 180]).
> 
> 
> 

Irenaeus

> 
> “It is possible, then, for everyone in every church, who may wish to
> know the truth, to contemplate the tradition of the apostles which has
> been made known to us throughouart the whole world. And we are in a
> position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the
> apostles and their successors down to our own times, men who neither
> knew nor taught anything like what these heretics rave about” (Against
> Heresies 3:3:1 [A.D. 189]).
> 
> 
> 

Etc...