And yes, the Fall was by "the appointment of God." It certainly didn't take God by surprise. He could have prevented it if He had chosen to. Did He plant the tree in the garden and allow the serpent to entice Eve, knowing full well what she would do? If He did not want history to occur as it did, could he not have done things a whole lot differently?
Was Christ not the lamb slain from the foundation of the world to atone for the sins of those whom God chose to be among His family?
"For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?" -- 1 Corinthians 4:17
Of course another over-riding reason for Scripture and the WCF to be true is that if the world is not ordained by God to be unfolding according to His will, then something else is at work in the universe that is mightier, more powerful God. Satan? Evil? Men's will? Now THAT is a frightening thought. Thank God Scripture tells us otherwise...
"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things" -- Isaiah 45:7
And thank you for those verses from Calvin and the WCF. They are all true. Just try believing the opposite of each statement and see how absurd they make God out to be.
"...nothing is more absurd than to think anything at all is done but by the ordination of God." (Calvin's Institutes, book 1., chap. 16, sect. 3.)
"Every action and motion of every creature is so governed by the hidden counsel of God, that nothing can come to pass, but what was ordained by him." (Ibid., sect. 3.)
"The wills of men are so governed by the will of God, that they are carried on straight to the mark which he has fore ordained." (Ibid., sect. 8.)
"I will not scruple to own that the will of God lays a necessity on all things, and that everything he wills necessarily comes to pass." (Calvin's Inst., b. 3, c. 24, sec. 8.)
"God not only foresaw that Adam would fall, but also ordained that he should." (Calvin's Inst., b. 3, c. 23, sec. 7.)
"...he fell not only by the permission, but also by the appointment, of God." (Calvin Responsio ad Calumnias Nebulonis cujusdam ad Articulum primum.)
"He sinned because God so ordained, because the Lord saw good." (Calvin's Inst., b. 3, c. 24, sec. 8.)
"They deny that the Scripture says God decreed Adam's fall. They say he might have chose either to fall or not; and that God fore ordained only to treat him according to his desert: As if God had created the noblest of all his creatures, without fore ordaining what should become of him!" (Ibid., b. 3, c. 23, sec. 7.)
“I confess it is a horrible decree; yet no one can deny but God foreknew Adam's fall, and therefore foreknew it, because he had ordained it so by his own decree." (Calv. Inst., b. 3, c. 23, sec. 7.)
"So the vulgar think; that God, as he foresees every man will deserve, elects them to life, or devotes them to death and damnation." (Calv. Inst., b. 3, c. 22, sec. 1.)
"God of his own good pleasure ordains that many should be born, who are from the womb devoted to inevitable damnation. If any man pretend that God's foreknowledge lays them under no necessity of being damned, but rather that he decreed their damnation because he foreknew their wickedness, I grant that God's foreknowledge alone lays no necessity on the creature; but eternal life and death depend on the will rather than the foreknowledge of God. If God only foreknew all things that relate to all men, and did not decree and ordain them also, then it might be inquired whether or no his foreknowledge necessitates the thing foreknown. But seeing he therefore foreknows all things that will come to pass, because he has decreed they shall come to pass, it is vain to contend about foreknowledge, since it so plain all things come to pass by God's positive decree." (Ibid., c. 23, s. 6.)
"For we neither can do more good than we do, nor less evil than we do; because God from eternity has precisely decreed that both the good and the evil should be so done." (Piscatoris Responsio ad Amicam Duplicationem Conradi Vorstii, p. 176.)
"God is the author of that action which is sinful, by his irresistible will." (Dr. Twisse, par. 3, p. 2 1.)
"God procures adultery, cursings, lyings." (Piscat. Responsio ad Apologiam Bertii.)
"He supplies wicked men with opportunities of sinning, and inclines their hearts thereto. He blinds, deceives, and seduces them. He, by his working on their hearts, bends and stirs them up to do evil." (Pet. Martyr. Ver. Comment. in Rom., pp. 36, 413.)
"...thieves, murderers, and other malefactors are God's instruments, which he uses to execute what he hath decreed in himself" (Calv. Inst., b. 1, c. 17, s. 5.)
"...when God makes angels or men sin, he does not sin himself, because he does not break any law. For God is under no law, and therefore cannot sin." (Zuinglius in Serm. de Provid., c. 5, 6.) [A good example of Calvinist logic chopping]
"The devil and wicked men are so held in on every side with the hand of God, that they cannot conceive, or contrive, or execute any mischief, any farther than God himself doth not permit only, but command. Nor are they only held in fetters, but compelled also, as with a bridle, to perform obedience to those commands." (Calv. Inst., b. 1, c. 17, S. 11.)