Distant Reader - subject-churchPolity-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 84 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 4,962,263 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 59,074 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 89. 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:

church, god, may, one, christ, will, men, power, yet, things, churches, must, man, shall, us, therefore, many, doth, first, now, word, say, much, also, without, thing, people, make, government, law, way, though, good, made, bishops, saith, apostles, great, might, others, every, onely, time, lord, another, reason, scripture, world, bishop, place

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are The due right of presbyteries, or, A peaceable plea for the government of the Church of Scotland ... by Samuel Rutherfurd ..., The works of Mr. Richard Hooker (that learned and judicious divine), in eight books of ecclesiastical polity compleated out of his own manuscripts, never before published : with an account of his life and death ..., and The divine right of church-government and excommunication: or a peacable dispute for the perfection of the holy scripture in point of ceremonies and church government; in which the removal of the Service-book is justifi''d, the six books of Tho: Erastus against excommunication are briefly examin''d; with a vindication of that eminent divine Theod: Beza against the aspersions of Erastus, the arguments of Mr. William Pryn, Rich: Hooker, Dr. Morton, Dr. Jackson, Dr. John Forbes, and the doctors of Aberdeen; touching will-worship, ceremonies, imagery, idolatry, things indifferent, an ambulatory government; the due and just powers of the magistrate in matters of religion, and the arguments of Mr. Pryn, in so far as they side with Erastus, are modestly discussed. To which is added, a brief tractate of scandal ... / By Samuel Rutherfurd, Professor of Divinity in the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Published by authority..

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

roman non, visible church, holy ghost, jesus christ, lords supper, new testament, whole church, every one, must needs, one another, reformed churches, particular church, let us, gods word, every man, one church, particular churches, english books, early english, holy things, catholick church, lord jesus, iesus christ, one place, old testament, tells us, many things, one thing, christian church, books online, church government, christian magistrate, may see, take away, one man, divine institution, true church, man may, men may, civil magistrate, whole world, divine right, god doth, christian religion, will say, tell us, one congregation, take heed, taken away, page images

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are A congregational church is a catholike visible church, or, An examination of M. Hudson his vindication concerning the integrality of the catholike visible church wherein also satisfaction is given to what M. Cawdrey writes touching that subject, in his review of M. Hooker''s Survey of church discipline / by Samuel Stone ... Antapologia, or, A full answer to the Apologeticall narration of Mr. Goodwin, Mr. Nye, Mr. Sympson, Mr. Burroughs, Mr. Bridge, members of the Assembly of Divines wherein is handled many of the controversies of these times, viz. ... : humbly also submitted to the honourable Houses of Parliament / by Thomas Edwards ..., and Tolleration iustified, and persecution condemn''d. In an answer or examination, of the London-ministers letter whereof, many of them are of the synod, and yet framed this letter at Sion-Colledge; to be sent among others, to themselves at the Assembly: in behalf of reformation and church-government, 2 Corinth. II. vers. 14. 15. And no marvail, for Sathan himself is transformed into an angell of light. Therefore it is no great thing, though his ministers transform themselves, as though they were ministers of righteousnesse; whose end shall be according to their works..

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, god, churches, christ, lord, government, scripture, law, gospel, apostles, word, roman, christian, power, bishops, ministers, magistrate, spirit, cor, authority, elders, presbyters, world, religion, laws, bishop, officers, office, parliament, king, doctrine, council, assembly, tcp, state, people, pastors, new, england, covenant, congregation, act, order, minister, kingdom, ghost, civil, city, apostle, testament

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 church, and A sermon preached at the consecration of the Right Reverend Father in God Ambrose Lord Bishop of Kildare in Christ-Church, Dublin, June 29, 1667 / by the right reverend father in God, Henry, Lord Bishop of Meath. 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?":

men, things, power, man, thing, way, people, church, others, time, p., reason, churches, place, part, doth, hath, word, scripture, words, nothing, truth, persons, nature, self, order, case, end, matter, faith, none, ▪, members, name, cause, world, government, one, apostles, times, body, work, religion, person, sin, respect, life, t, hands, use

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, are, have, was, were, had, do, did, being, say, been, make, made, said, take, see, called, give, given, know, done, according, let, come, think, hath, set, prove, concerning, put, having, taken, hold, doth, received, am, answer, used, judge, bee, thought, speak, follow, teach, brought, use, cast, read, found

Proper Nouns

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

〉, church, ◊, 〈, god, christ, c., churches, lord, hath, law, bishop, bishops, ●, government, apostles, word, king, de, cor, christian, paul, pope, authority, gods, gospel, rome, ministers, christians, magistrate, council, mr., world, yea, holy, pag, l., doe, power, spirit, lords, laws, england, act, elders, christs, covenant, minister, office, presbyters

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?"

it, they, their, he, his, them, i, we, you, our, him, us, your, themselves, my, himself, me, its, her, thy, she, thee, theirs, one, ours, ye, yours, mine, whereof, itself, yee, ib, ourselves, vp, vnto, u, s, non, herself, hee, l, f, elias, ●, vvhat, hers, ''em, à, whosoever, severall

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?"

such, other, many, same, own, great, more, good, first, true, particular, much, whole, necessary, common, visible, non, new, saith, -, holy, former, roman, present, least, greater, most, little, second, private, able, very, false, like, old, ordinary, christian, last, doth, better, scandalous, contrary, certain, several, civil, general, lawfull, sufficient, free, publick

not, so, then, therefore, now, more, also, as, only, yet, onely, most, here, up, well, even, out, thus, never, much, first, very, ever, there, together, far, too, all, thereof, rather, in, away, still, down, indeed, before, again, otherwise, no, else, especially, off, that, is, forth, at, long, once, sometimes, hence

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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