Distant Reader - subject-sects-freebo

Introduction

This is a Distant Reader "study carrel", a set of structured data intended to help the student, researcher, or scholar use & understand a corpus.

This study carrel was created on 2021-05-24 by Eric Morgan <emorgan@nd.edu>. The carrel was created using the Distant Reader zip2carrel process, and the input was a Zip file locally cached with the name input-file.zip. Documents in the Zip file have been saved in a cache, and each of them have been transformed & saved as a set of plain text files. All of the analysis -- "reading" -- has been done against these plain text files. For example, a short narrative report has been created. This Web page is a more verbose version of that report.

All study carrels are self-contained -- no Internet connection is necessary to use them. Download this carrel for offline reading. The carrel is made up of many subdirectories and data files. The manifest describes each one in greater detail.

Size

There are 7 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 289,353 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 41,336 words long. If you dig deeper, then you might want to save yourself some time by reading a shorter item. On the other hand, if your desire is for more detail, then you might consider reading a longer item. The following charts illustrate the overall size of the carrel.

Readability

On a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 is very difficult and 100 is very easy, the documents have an average readability score of 91. Consequently, if you want to read something more simplistic, then consider a document with a higher score. If you want something more specialized, then consider something with a lower score. The following charts illustrate the overall readability of the carrel.

Word Frequencies

By merely counting & tabulating the frequency of individual words or phrases, you can begin to get an understanding of the carrel's "aboutness". Excluding "stop words", some of the more frequent words include:

god, will, one, church, many, may, mr, man, men, sectaries, christ, great, shall, cretensis, us, yet, now, way, things, much, also, first, good, make, say, ministers, time, though, book, truth, churches, people, doe, master, words, others, come, like, made, never, part, give, day, errours, without, might, well, another, yea, answer

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are The first and second part of Gangræna, or, A catalogue and discovery of many of the errors, heresies, blasphemies and pernicious practices of the sectaries of this time, vented and acted in England in these four last years also a particular narration of divers stories, remarkable passages, letters : an extract of many letters, all concerning the present sects : together with some observations upon and corollaries from all the fore-named premisses / by Thomas Edwards ..., Heresiography, or, A discription of the hereticks and sectaries of these latter times by E. Pagitt., and An indictment against England because of her selfe-murdering divisions: together vvith an exhortation to an England-preserving vnity and concord. Presented in a sermon preached before the Right Honourable House of Lords in the Abby church at Westminster; at the late solemne fast, December 25. 1644. By Edmund Calamy, B.D. and pastour of Aldermanbury in London..

The most frequent two-word phrases (bigrams) include:

roman non, let us, holy ghost, among us, reformed churches, reader may, may see, lords day, master edwards, jesus christ, many things, godly minister, godly ministers, lords supper, amongst us, iesus christ, one another, english books, one man, god will, early english, lords prayer, set forth, come forth, every one, church government, second part, every man, set downe, books online, taken away, almighty god, take away, man may, one thing, many others, church way, master burroughs, set prayers, new testament, take notice, first part, honourable house, will give, make good, will make, one way, holy scripture, virgin mary, nothing else

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are The schismatick sifted. Or, The picture of Independents, freshly and fairly washt-over again. Wherein, the sectaries of these times (I mean, the principall seducers to that dangerous and subtile schisme of Independency) are with their own proper pensils, and self-mixed colours, most lively set forth to be a generation of notorious dissemblers and sly deceivers. Collected (for the most part) from undeniable testimonies under their own hands, in print; for the more fair and full satisfaction, and undeceiving of moderate and much misled Christians; especially by the outward appearance of their piety of life, and a pretence of their preaching sound-doctrine. / By John Vicars. Reasons against the independant government of particular congregations: as also against the toleration of such churches to be erected in this kingdome. Together with an answer to such reasons as are commonly alledged for such a toleration. Presented in all humility to the Honourable House of Commons, now assembled in Parliament. By Tho. Edvvards, minister of the Gospel., and An indictment against England because of her selfe-murdering divisions: together vvith an exhortation to an England-preserving vnity and concord. Presented in a sermon preached before the Right Honourable House of Lords in the Abby church at Westminster; at the late solemne fast, December 25. 1644. By Edmund Calamy, B.D. and pastour of Aldermanbury in London..

While often deemed superficial or sophomoric, rudimentary frequencies and their associated "word clouds" can be quite insightful:

Keywords

Sets of keywords -- statistically significant words -- can be enumerated by comparing the relative frequency of words with the number of times the words appear in an entire corpus. Some of the most statistically significant keywords in the carrel include:

church, lord, god, sectaries, mr., ministers, kingdome, government, churches, christ, truth, toleration, master, letter, independents, house, england, edwards, committee, book, assembly, tcp, taylor, spirit, smith, sermons, sect, scriptures, scripture, saints, roman, rom, reply, religion, reader, presbyterians, presbyterian, peace, paul, parliament, papists, officers, new, law, king, iohn, independant, heresies, greenhil, gospel

And now word clouds really begin to shine:

Topic Modeling

Topic modeling is another popular approach to connoting the aboutness of a corpus. If the study carrel could be summed up in a single word, then that word might be god, and A just apologie for the church of Duckenfield in Cheshire against certain slanderous reports received by Mr. Edwards his overmuch credulite of what may tend to the reproach of those that differ from himselfe in judgement (though but concerning matters meerly of externall order, and things of inferior ally to the substantiall doctrines of faith, and manners) rashly and without further examination of the truth of them, (together with an overplus of his own censures, and uncharitable animadversions) divulged by himselfe in a !--- book of his, intituled, The third part of Gangræna / by Samuel Eaton, teacher & Timothy Taylor, pastour of the Church of God at Duckerfeild ; whereunto also is annexed a letter of a godly minister, Mr. Henry Rootes ... in vindication of himselfe against a sinister and dangerous (yet false and groundlesse) insinuation, contained in the copie of a letter out of Yorkshire, sent unto the aforesaid Mr. Edwards, and by him published to the kingdome. is most about that word.

If the study carrel could be summed up in three words ("topics") then those words and their significantly associated titles include:

If the study carrel could be summed up in five topics, and each topic were each denoted with three words, then those topics and their most significantly associated files would be:

Moreover, the totality of the study carrel's aboutness, can be visualized with the following pie chart:

Noun & Verbs

Through an analysis of your study carrel's parts-of-speech, you are able to answer question beyonds aboutness. For example, a list of the most frequent nouns helps you answer what questions; "What is discussed in this collection?":

man, men, way, things, sectaries, time, p., people, truth, words, others, day, part, thing, power, world, reader, peace, opinions, persons, faith, t, hand, times, places, hath, place, reason, sin, nothing, churches, cause, hands, ▪, word, name, hee, saints, life, errors, self, church, books, story, manner, ministers, grace, love, scripture, divisions

An enumeration of the verbs helps you learn what actions take place in a text or what the things in the text do. Very frequently, the most common lemmatized verbs are "be", "have", and "do"; the more interesting verbs usually occur further down the list of frequencies:

is, be, have, are, was, were, had, being, do, make, say, been, come, did, made, give, said, take, set, let, see, done, having, know, given, put, am, read, called, came, concerning, written, taken, doe, speak, hath, according, brought, bring, sent, found, think, speaking, hold, told, preach, tell, cast, spoken, preaching

Proper Nouns

An extraction of proper nouns helps you determine the names of people and places in your study carrel.

god, church, mr., christ, cretensis, c., ●, master, 〉, hath, book, ministers, parliament, ◊, lord, 〈, independents, england, yea, kingdome, presbyterians, minister, churches, gods, doe, london, pag, sectaries, government, lords, errours, anabaptists, m., independent, edwards, iohn, gangraena, assembly, law, burroughs, christians, doctrine, holy, king, house, spirit, heaven, wee, paul, covenant

An analysis of personal pronouns enables you to answer at least two questions: 1) "What, if any, is the overall gender of my study carrel?", and 2) "To what degree are the texts in my study carrel self-centered versus inclusive?"

they, i, it, their, them, his, he, you, our, him, my, we, us, me, your, themselves, her, himself, she, thy, thee, theirs, its, yours, ours, one, mine, ye, ''s, yee, whereof, whosoever, severall, ourselves, myself, itself, ib, choakt, ce, bl

Below are words cloud of your study carrel's proper & personal pronouns.

Adjectives & Verbs

Learning about a corpus's adjectives and adverbs helps you answer how questions: "How are things described and how are things done?" An analysis of adjectives and adverbs also points to a corpus's overall sentiment. "In general, is my study carrel positive or negative?"

many, other, great, such, good, own, more, much, first, true, godly, same, false, whole, last, particular, new, holy, present, full, little, common, second, most, non, few, -, old, greater, able, contrary, strange, roman, saith, dangerous, high, former, better, wicked, christian, private, large, very, least, free, late, greatest, lawfull, honourable, long

not, so, then, now, up, also, more, as, out, most, never, yet, therefore, well, only, much, ever, thus, in, here, together, first, onely, down, forth, even, away, too, very, all, there, off, especially, far, again, indeed, else, once, rather, secondly, still, namely, before, over, long, at, just, no, truly, on

Next steps

There is much more to a study carrel than the things outlined above. Use this page's menubar to navigate and explore in more detail. There you will find additional features & functions including: ngrams, parts-of-speech, grammars, named entities, topic modeling, a simple search interface, etc.

Again, study carrels are self-contained. Download this carrel for offline viewing and use.

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