 When subjects institute a sovereign by authorizing it, they agree, in conformity with the principle “no wrong is done to a consenting party”, not to hold it liable for any errors in judgment it may make and not to treat any harms it does to them as actionable injustices. Although many interpreters have assumed that by authorizing a sovereign, subjects become morally responsible for the actions it commands, Hobbes instead insists that “the external actions done in obedience to [laws], without the inward approbation, are the actions of the sovereign, and not of the subject, which is in that case but as an instrument, without any motion of his own at all” (Leviathan xlii, 106). It may be important to Hobbes’s project of persuading his Christian readers to obey their sovereign that he can reassure them that God will not hold them responsible for wrongful actions done at the sovereign’s command, because they cannot reasonably be expected to obey if doing so would jeopardize their eternal prospects. Hence Hobbes explains that “whatsoever a subject...is compelled to do in obedience to his sovereign, and doth it not in order to his own mind, but in order to the laws of his country, that action is not his, but his sovereign’s.” (Leviathan xlii. 11) This position reinforces absolutism by permitting Hobbes to maintain that subjects can obey even commands to perform actions they believe to be sinful without fear of divine punishment.