That does not answer who will come does it? Why some come or anothers do not
This chapter of the Institutes is about the character of God and how we can not know ourselves untill we know Him..and how we can not know Him untill we know ourselves
....I think that might come under the heading of "revelation" of God to a man about who He is ...that is the whosoever..the one with eyes to see and ears to hear..
It is not a matter of who is in the right place at the right time or who is smarter or more holy...
It's the same cement wall the Arminians keep banging their heads against.
If we are agreed that all men are fallen, then what is it that causes one person to "respond to the Light of the Gospel," and others to "choose the darkness," as FTD asked.
The Arminians would have us believe some men are capable of choosing God on their own; they're not quite as "fallen" as others. Like the ruling-class pigs in "Animal Farm," some animals are "more equal" than others.
But Calvin was a true egalitarian who wrote that only after we acknowledge all men to be fallen and utterly lost, can we begin to perceive the true and vast nature of God; that all salvation, like everything else, comes from He who created it.
What do you think, it is not God's will to get all men the message of the Gospel?
Does not even nature reveal God to man so that he will begin to grope towards God ( Psa.19,Rom.1,Acts 17)
Now, here is the amazing thing, you talk about the 'mystery' of God in election and yet, there can be no mystery in God calling all men to salvation?
Since you cannot understand how it would work and even though Scripture speaks of it, you reject it because you cannot understand why some would respond and some would reject the free gift.
It is not for you to understand the how only the fact that it does occur since God throughout His Scriptures says 'whosoever'.
But, you would rather make God lie in His Scriptures (and run to a 'secret will') then to accept the facts that Scriptures say that God wants all men saved and died for all men and all men are savable.
Thus, in your hubris you feign humility, while rejecting the truth revealed to you in the words of God.