How to preserve formatting and protect the code from scripts

I am trying to find a way to escape the scripts or tags inserted to my database and at the same time preserve the text formatting. However I bumped into several problems that only solved either of the two. I’m trying to do it in $blog['title'] and $blog['content']

I tried using nl2br() to preseve the formatting. It works on preserving the formatting but it still does not escape HTML tags and scripts.

These are my codes. Please note that I am using class where all my functions are there and instantiated the class in my current blog page.

Blog Post HTML Block

<?php
                            if(isset($_GET['id'])){
                                $selectedBlog = $cakeOrdering->get_data("SELECT blogID, title, content, img, author, dateCreated FROM blogs WHERE blogID = ?", array($_GET['id']));
                                if(is_array($selectedBlog) || is_object($selectedBlog)){
                                    foreach($selectedBlog as $blog){
                        ?>
                        <!-- Blog Posts -->
                        <div class="blog_item">
                            <div class="blog_img">
                                <img class="img-fluid" src="../img/blogs/<?php echo $blog['img']; ?>" alt="">
                            </div>
                            <div class="blog_text">
                                <div class="blog_time">
                                    <div class="float-left">
                                        <a href="#"><?php echo $blog['dateCreated']; ?></a>
                                    </div>
                                    <div class="float-right">
                                        <ul class="list_style">
                                            <li><a href="#">By :  <?php echo $blog['author']; ?></a></li>
                                            <li><a href="#">category</a></li>
                                            <li><a href="#">Comments: 8</a></li>
                                        </ul>
                                    </div>
                                </div>
                                <a href="#"><h4><?php echo $cakeOrdering->escape($blog['title']); ?></h4></a>
                                <p style="word-wrap: break-word;"><?php echo $cakeOrdering->escape(nl2br($blog['content'])); ?></p>
                            </div>
                        </div>
                        <?php }}} ?>

I have created a function I called escape in my php class

// Escaping characters
public function escape($string){
    echo htmlspecialchars($string, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');
}

if I use this:

$cakeOrdering->escape(nl2br($blog['content']));

it outputs:

but if I remove the escape function like this

nl2br($blog['content']);

it outputs: (preserved formatting but also executes the script)

Answer

Call it the other way round:

nl2br($cakeOrdering->escape($blog['content']));