Nevay entered King's College, Aberdeen in 1622, and graduated M.A. in 1626. For some time he was tutor to the Master of Ramsay; and on the recommendation of the presbytery of Alford he was licensed as a preacher of the kirk of Scotland by the presbytery of Dalkeith on 14 October 1630. In 1637 he was admitted minister of Newmilns in Ayrshire, and he was chosen a member of the general assemblies of 1646, 1647, and 1649.
Nevay was opposed to all forms of set prayer in public worship, objecting to the use of the Lord's Prayer, the Gloria Patri, and the repeating of the creed at baptism. In the assembly of 1647 he was appointed to revise Francis Rous's version of the last thirty psalms, with a view to the adoption of the collection by the assembly.
Nevay joined the Whigamores at Mauchline in June 1648. His conduct, with that of others who took part in the raid, was absolved by an act of parliament passed in the following January. In July 1649 he was named one of the commissioners for visiting the university of Aberdeen. In 1650 he took an active part in raising the western army, composed of Covenanters. On the division of the church in 1651 into two parties, the "resolutioners" and the "protesters", Nevay sided with the protesters, who abjured Charles II, and claimed for the spiritual power an extensive jurisdiction over civil matters. In 1654 he was named by the English Council of State one of those for authorising admissions to the ministry in the province of Glasgow and Ayr.
After the Restoration of 1660, Nevay was on 11 December 1661 banished by the privy council from Charles II's dominions, and went to Holland. On 20 July a demand by the English government for his expulsion, along with Robert Macuard and Robert Traill, was laid before the states of Holland, and on 23 September placards were issued, stating that they were sentenced to leave the Dutch territory within fifteen days under pain of being prosecuted as "stubborn rebels".
Nevay died in Holland about January 1672]
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