1 Peter 2:15

‘For so is the will of God, that by well-doing you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish men,'

And one good reason for behaving in this way is because by doing what is seen to be right evil tongues will be silenced. This indeed is God's will. And the point is that God's will is that no one should be able honestly to accuse Christ and His followers of wrongdoing or of flouting the law. This is partly in order to aid the spreading of the Gospel, and partly because God is indeed against wrongdoing. They are thus to use discretion and wisdom. By this means foolish men will be silenced. The foolish man is the man who opposes God and His ways, and is thus basically ignorant (guilty of folly), however clever he might be in other matters. So he is best countered by righteous living with the result that he will have no charges that he can make.

(Had Nero already begun his persecutions such a statement would have been hazardous indeed if the letter fell into the wrong hands, which as a circular letter it surely would. Indeed it might have been construed as high treason against the Emperor who would not like being linked with ‘foolish men').